


A Fairy Tale for Troubled Times

by francisabernathywontpayhisparkingtickets



Category: The Shape of Water (2017), 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Genre: I have been informed that the summary of this fic makes it look like a joke, I said what I said pt. 2, LWJ is the fishman, M/M, autistic fishman lan wangji, i said what i said, let me assure you that I am taking this very seriously, please don't look at me, the rest is self explanatory, this is the shape of water au no one asked for, trans wei wuxian
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:27:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27361963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/francisabernathywontpayhisparkingtickets/pseuds/francisabernathywontpayhisparkingtickets
Summary: Wei Wuxian working as a janitor in a secret government facility... what fishmen will he kiss?
Relationships: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Comments: 22
Kudos: 41





	1. We float at the bottom of a river.

**Author's Note:**

> I am an idiot so this will contain inaccuracies about both the 1960s and Ancient China.

If I’m being really honest (and aren’t fairy tales the place for honesty) it would have been a better story if Wei Wuxian had been the scientist. It would have been better if he’d been a military general or even a diplomat like A-Jie. But, as it was, Wei Wuxian was a janitor, and then he was a traitor, and then he was a monster. Now, he’s dead. That’s just how the story goes.

—— 

Wei Wuxian took the bus to work—not because he had to. Jiang Cheng used to drive him, but, at some point and without speaking it out loud, they had decided that was no longer a good idea. The Yunmeng Jiang Sect was important, but that didn’t mean Wei Wuxian was. To borrow the phrase Jiang Cheng used at office parties Wei Wuxian wasn’t invited to, “He’s adopted. He can’t help it.” Still, they’d grown up together. They’d had the same opportunities even if those opportunities hadn’t resulted in the same outcome. And, after graduating college with matching degrees in Biology, they’d taken the same placement test. Of course, Nightless Facility, while ostensibly a government operation, was dominated by various members of the Qishan Wen Clan, whose monopoly on the research and development of military weaponry had begun to raise eyebrows. This might have been why the two Yunmeng brothers had been invited to apply for positions in their lab, or maybe it was just good old fashioned nepotism. The Yunmeng Jiang Sect was important after all, and it never hurts to have allies in politics. So, Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian completed an exam to test both their competence and psychiatric condition. The story from there is quite simple actually. Jiang Cheng passed and Wei Wuxian failed.

Wei Wuxian took the bus to work. Like his brother, he fell asleep when the sun came up and got up for work only after it went down. Unlike his brother, he spent most of the night cleaning. It wasn’t so bad. Usually, he got to spend the night with Wen Ning—a fuckup in the shadow of his more respectable sibling and, thus, a bit of a kindred spirit.

“You’d think our best scientists would be able to clean up after themselves.” Wei Wuxian was mopping the floor of a hallway somewhere in the depths of Nightless Facility. He was unfairly beautiful under the fluorescent lights, and Wen Ning thought he was probably only complaining to make him laugh. Usually, it would work, but today he kept his head down.

“You really shouldn’t speak so loud. Wen Chao is working tonight,” he said, smiling just a little into the handle of his mop. 

“You’re right,” Wei Wuxian said, mock-serious. “God forbid he hear me calling him one of our best scientists.” That got Wen Ning to giggle a little, but he still wouldn’t look up. Wei Wuxian started walking backward, moving his mop wildly along with him to get Wen Ning’s attention. “He wouldn’t know a test tube if he tripped over one. I bet he wouldn’t know a test tube if you shoved one up his—”

Someone cleared his throat just as Wei Wuxian walked directly into him. Wen Ning, finally looking up from his mop, went very still. “I’m sorry, Wen Chao,” he said, any trace of humor dropping from his face. “I’m sure he didn’t know what he was saying,”

Wei Wuxian slowly turned around, his back still brushing against Wen Chao as he moved, and gave Wen Chao a wide smile. “I never know what I’m saying.”

——

Wei Wuxian was not fired, and, for that, he was perhaps lucky. He was, however, sent home early. This was not the first time he had pissed off a Wen, and it was not likely to be the last. It was also not the first time he had pissed off Jiang Cheng, who was waiting for him at the front of Nightless Facility as he made his way out.

“You don’t have to drive me. I can take the bus,” Wei Wuxian said. Jiang Cheng fell into step with him as he walked past. He was frowning, but he was usually frowning.

“We always drive home together,” he said.

That was true. Wei Wuxian honestly wasn’t sure why that was true. While they had at some point stopped driving to work together, they still left together. It was just what they did. Wei Wuxian wanted to protest. He wanted to tell Jiang Cheng that this was his mistake, and he would deal with it, but that would mean saying that he regretted what he’d said about Wen Chao, and he didn’t. How could he when it had made Wen Ning laugh? Instead, he followed Jiang Cheng to his car and slumped silently into the passenger seat, waiting to get chewed out for impudence or whatever. Only, that didn’t happen. Jiang Cheng turned the key and drove out of the lot in complete silence. That was worse than chewing him out. Wei Wuxian could feel him fuming. It ate up the oxygen in the car, hardened the air between them into something so thick Wei Wuxian could choke on it. “So, you’re angry at me, right?” he said because he had to say something, staring at his brother who was staring at the road.

“I’m not angry with you,” Jiang Cheng said.

“Right.” Wei Wuxian turned to face the road, twiddling his thumbs in his lap. “But, like, you are though, right?”

“I’m not.” A muscle tensed in Jiang Cheng’s jaw.

“Uh huh.” Wei Wuxian bit his lip and nodded slightly. “But, like, you’re clearly angry at someone.”

Jiang Cheng sighed heavily. “Can we just not talk about it?”

“Sure,” Wei Wuxian said. And they didn’t, not even when Jiang Cheng pulled up to the little house they rented outside of town and got out of the car, slamming the door behind him. Wei Wuxian had his own key so it wasn’t a big deal when Jiang Cheng locked him out, but this was a worse fight than they’d had in a while and they hadn’t even said anything. Wei Wuxian was used to fucking up. Hell, he’d been written up for worse things than making fun of the new boss. But, he thought he knew why Jiang Cheng was angry with him. Wen Chao _was_ new, though his appointment hadn’t come as a surprise. His father Wen Ruohan had been operating Nightless Facility almost single-handedly for just under ten years, and it had long been rumored that he was training his son to oversee some special project. Wei Wuxian had asked Jiang Cheng if he knew anything about that project last week when Wen Chao had first become their boss, but Jiang Cheng had just murmured one of his usual stock phrases about classified government secrets and changed the subject. Both Wen Chao and his father were military men, not scientists. It had clearly bothered Jiang Cheng that he would have to answer to someone with less expertise than him, but he still wanted to make a good impression. Wei Wuxian had known that, and he’d ruined it all anyway.

It hadn’t just been the comment. After he realized Wen Chao had heard him, Wei Wuxian had continued to antagonize him until he brought Wei Wuxian to his father. Even still, it might’ve been fine if it had ended there—if he had just kept his mouth shut and let Wen Chao prove whatever he clearly needed to prove to Wen Ruohan. But, well, Wei Wuxian was pretty good at sniffing out insecurities, especially when they were as fragrant as Wen Chao’s, and he really really couldn’t leave well enough alone. So, when Wen Chao suggested that Wen Ruohan fire Wei Wuxian for disrespecting him, Wei Wuxian had said, “I know our sects share a delicate diplomatic relationship, but I had always thought the Wens had a reputation for maintaining control over delicate situations. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to jeopardize that reputation and that relationship just because some janitor hurt your feelings.”

It was a mistake on a couple of levels; even Wei Wuxian could acknowledge that. For one, it had prompted Wen Chao to hit him across the face, which he hadn’t been expecting and would probably bruise. Second, Wen Rouhan had used the opportunity to embarrass his son, listing Wen Chao’s various failures—from some ambiguous inability to make progress on a project to falling prey to the cheap wit of a cleaner. There was no way Wen Chao would ever forgive Wei Wuxian for witnessing that, let alone being the impetus of it. Third, and worst of all, leveraging the diplomatic ties between the Wen Clan and Jiang Sect had ensured that his parents would definitely hear about the incident, and they wouldn’t be happy.

More precisely, while his father Jiang Fengmian wouldn’t be upset, that would only enrage his mother, Madame Yu, who would blame Wei Wuxian for damaging Jiang Cheng’s reputation. And either outcome would upset Jiang Cheng. Wei Wuxian could already see the way it would play out: Jiang Fengmian coddling him, trying and failing not to appear proud of him for acting out; Madame Yu screaming about the dangers of taking in strays; and Jiang Cheng in the middle of it all, caught as always in the maelstrom of Wei Wuxian’s mistakes. He was supposed to be the older brother. He was supposed to be the one taking care of Jiang Cheng. Of course, Jiang Cheng was angry. Who wouldn’t be?

Well, Wei Wuxian would just have to figure out how to make it up to him. He maneuvered out of Jiang Cheng’s "teal" Cadillac, careful not to ding the stupid green paint, and bounced up the steps to the front door. You’d think a prestigious government job would pay well enough to avoid having to take on a roommate. It did actually. Though they were completely inscrutable to Wei Wuxian himself, Jiang Cheng had his own reasons for keeping Wei Wuxian around. So, they shared the house, which was divided into two separate wings, and kept mostly to themselves. They did still eat together, except on the days Jiang Cheng was too busy with a work project to come out of his room. Wei Wuxian had a feeling that regardless of how much work Jiang Cheng had actually been assigned, it was going to be one of those days. It was almost dawn now and, in order to execute his plan to ask for forgiveness without apologizing, Wei Wuxian was going to need the kitchen to himself for a couple of hours anyway. He had just turned the key in the lock and was starting in the direction of their kitchen when a rottweiler turned the corner to see who was at the door. The dog bared its sharp teeth at him, a low hum emanating from its large body and a thin line of drool dripping from the side of its mouth. 

Wei Wuxian shrieked. He dropped his keys and pressed himself closely against the opposite wall. “Jian Cheng,” he shouted. “Jian Cheng, dog! Jiang Cheng, it’s gonna fucking kill me.”

From a few rooms away, Jiang Cheng called out “Princess.” The dog immediately untensed, loping in big easy steps toward Wei Wuxian, who pried himself gently off the wall and stepped gingerly away from the dog where it stood wagging its tail. Princess followed him, picking up a toy and nudging the back of his leg.

“Yep. Yeah. Just”—Wei Wuxian grabbed the toy from the dog with two fingers and tossed it through the door to Jiang Cheng’s side of the house like it had burned him—“stay over there.” Princess bounded across the room after the toy, and Wei Wuxian took the opportunity to put a door between them. He was breathing in short, shallow bursts that made him feel light-headed. He felt himself sliding down the wall to the floor before he realized he was doing it and took the moment to gather himself on the cold hardwood. Princess was sweet, mostly. But, since they were children, Jiang Cheng had been training his dogs to snap and snarl at Wei Wuxian. A little bit of much-deserved payback for Wei Wuxian’s intrusion into his family. It hadn’t been a problem in a while. Princess forgot she was supposed to hate Wei Wuxian when Jiang Cheng was around, and she usually stuck to his side of the house. Whatever. It was fine. A little less than ten minutes later, Wei Wuxian picked himself off the floor and made his way to the kitchen.

——

By noon that day, Wei Wuxian was completely exhausted, but he was carrying two bowls of Lotus Root and Pork Rib soup. He’d long ago learned to replicate his sister’s recipe: pork, seaweed, lotus roots, ginger, and a whole heap of guilt. Of course, without Jiang Yanli there to serve it, it didn’t work nearly so well to end a fight. She’d always had a knack for that. These days, it made her a particularly good diplomat. Even still, it was a start. At the very least, it would help Jiang Cheng begin to unthaw, and then maybe they could talk about what was wrong—whatever it actually was.

Wei Wuxian balanced the two bowls, careful both not to spill and to differentiate between Jiang Cheng’s serving and his own much spicier one, as he traveled through the house to Jiang Cheng’s room. He had just maneuvered both bowls into one hand and was about to knock on the door when he heard a woman speaking inside Jiang Cheng’s room. If this stopped him in his tracks, it must be understood that it wasn’t out of any inclination to eavesdrop, but rather because Jiang Cheng had _a woman in his room_.

“I just don’t trust him,” she was saying. She sounded even more tired than Wei Wuxian felt.

“You think I do?” Jiang Cheng asked. His voice was louder and clearer than the woman’s. Wei Wuxian tried to remain as quiet as possible on the other side of the door. It must be a phone call. Even worse, it must've been a phone call about him.

“I know you don’t,” the woman said. “I just don’t think he knows what he’s doing. He’s under a lot of pressure, and that can make anything seem like a good idea. Jiang Cheng, he could destroy everything we’ve been working on just to prove he knows best.”

Right. Well, this was clearly not a conversation Wei Wuxian was intended to hear. He laid the soup delicately next to the door so Jiang Cheng would see it and knocked gently. Princess exploded into loud yelps inside, and Jiang Cheng said, "Hold on a second. My brother's knocking." But before he could open the door, Wei Wuxian beat a hasty retreat back to his side of the house where there were no dogs and no brothers to disappoint.


	2. Surrounded by water.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Now, with 100% more fishman Lan WangJi.
> 
> Wei Wuxian, like me, thinks fishmen are hot. Don't @ me.

Jiang Cheng couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt really awake. He didn’t show it—or at least tried hard not to show it—but he was always, always tired. He’d spent most of yesterday on the phone with Wen Qing. She was freaking out about Wen Chao and the Asset and the fact that they hadn’t made any progress on their stupid fucking project. Wen Chao wasn’t happy. Last night, he’d whipped the Asset until Wen Qing had stepped between them. He almost hit her too but paused just in time, and then he’d stormed out of the lab. Stormed directly into Wei Wuxian apparently, but that was its own disaster.

Throughout all of this, Jiang Cheng had stood in the back of the lab, frozen and shuddering and completely useless. Wen Chao could have killed it. He would have killed it if Wen Qing hadn’t stepped in. And what had Jiang Cheng done? They would have lost everything they’d been working on for months, and he’d just stood there watching. He just stood there watching again. Completely fucking useless.

Now, he was with Wen Qing in the lab. Wen Chao wasn’t in yet, but he was bound to be there any second and Wen Qing still wanted to make a plan. “I just think we should be prepared in case he attacks it again,” she was saying. “We need a strategy, Jiang Cheng.”

“We’ve been over this.” Jiang Cheng was scribbling notes about the Asset’s medical care. Part of the reason they were researching the Asset was its uncanny ability to rapidly heal itself, but it would take a few days for it to recover enough from last night's incident for them to resume their tests. He really wasn’t looking forward to breaking that news to Wen Chao. “Our best strategy is to just finish the project before Wen Chao has another tantrum.”

“And we’ve been over why that’s a terrible idea.” Wen Qing could talk circles around him. She had been talking circles around him all day. And the worst part was that Jiang Cheng couldn’t talk to anyone else about it. He knew his concerns were reasonable. He knew that the best way to deal with Wen Chao was just to let him tire himself out, but Wen Qing wasn’t having it, and he couldn't ask for a third opinion or anything because the project was classified.

So, maybe Jiang Cheng had been sulking a little. At least enough for Wei Wuxian to notice. He’d made Jiang Cheng soup in a mostly fruitless effort to cheer him up. Jiang Cheng wanted to tell Wei Wuxian about the project. He badly wanted to tell him how terrible working with Wen Chao could be, but he couldn’t. It was classified, and Wei Wuxian was the absolute worst at keeping secrets. Besides, he’d probably just tell Jiang Cheng to “stand up for himself,” completely missing the fact that “standing up” to your boss is career suicide. Honestly, with his luck, Wei Wuxian and Wen Qing would get along famously, and then he’d have two bleeding heart biologists telling him to stick it to the system or whatever. It was for the best that Jiang Cheng stuck to sulking.

“Jiang Cheng?”

“Hm?”

Wen Qing gave him a significant look where she stood by the vertical tank. The Asset was floating in the viewing window, and it seemed to be staring directly at him. Nightless Facility was aptly named, and not just because it’s employees worked night shifts. Most of the building was underground. The cold fluorescents gave the place a hospital quality, or maybe it was more like a school gym after dark. Either way, the hallways were creepy on a good day, but this lab—his lab—was different. The fluorescents shone into algae-laden pools and through the large vertical viewing tanks connected to them to cast dark blue shadows or produce bright glowy patches of water-textured light at weird angles. Jiang Cheng had fallen in love with this lab the moment he’d been stationed in it, and, in his own way, he loved the Asset too. As far as they could tell from their research, the creature had been worshipped as a God before it had been dragged halfway across the world to these little tanks. Jiang Cheng thought he understood that worship. Something about the Asset made it hard not to love.

“Is it looking at me?” He asked, darting his eyes nervously between the Asset and Wen Ching. In its tank, the Asset tilted its head minutely, an almost human gesture. Jiang Cheng would have to note a tendency toward mimicry under its known behavioral components.

Wen Qing laughed softly. “Do you think it likes what it sees?”

“You shouldn’t anthropomorphize it.” Jiang Cheng moved a few steps to the left. The creature's eyes followed him. He moved a few steps to the right. The creature’s eyes followed him. It was frowning slightly. Or, no, it wasn’t frowning because it wasn’t human; but, wait, no, now it was definitely frowning. Now, it was snarling. Yes, definitely snarling and also looking past Jiang Cheng to the door behind him where—

“I see you’re both hard at work.” Wen Chao was standing in the doorway.

“We were waiting for you,” Wen Qing said, sweetly. Jiang Cheng wasn’t sure how she could manage to sound so sweet after he’d spent the last 24 hours listening to her talk about how much she hated Wen Chao, but she managed it. Wen Chao gave her a smile that made Jiang Cheng want to punch him.

“Get that thing out of its tank,” Wen Chao said, running his pointer finger against his bottom lip. “I want to take another look at it.” 

“You can’t do that.” Wen Qing shot a helpless look at Jiang Cheng.

“I don’t remember asking your opinion.” Wen Chao didn’t even look at her as he said it. His eyes were trained on the Asset, still baring its sharp teeth at him from the viewing window of the vertical tank.

“I think what she means, Wen Chao,” Jiang Cheng said, “is that the Asset is still recovering from the… yesterday’s tests. We’ve taken some samples from the wounds and were thinking of doing a microscopic examination to investigate the method of auto-wound closure.” Wen Chao didn’t stray from his spot in front of the creature. Jiang Cheng stepped forward to try and get his attention. “We also took some blood samples if that’s more interesting to you.”

Wen Chao turned to face him. “I said get it out of the tank.”

“Okay. Give me a moment.” Jiang Cheng started walking across the lab toward one of the open-air pools.

“You can’t just—” Wen Qing cut herself off with a wince, and Jiang Cheng put a hand on her shoulder as he walked by. He felt it tense under his hand. 

Together, the two of them lured the Asset into the pool, tranquilized it, and hauled it into the center of the room. It couldn’t survive out of the water for more than a few hours at a time, but it would be fine. Hopefully, they could distract Wen Chao before things got too messy. Wen Chao was bored by research, but he could be lured by the promise of results. Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing had gotten the sense recently that they were on a time crunch, either because Wen Ruohan had sped up their research timeline or because Wen Chao was tired of being assigned to their project. Regardless, they really didn’t have time to sit around watching his sadistic torture kicks even if they had wanted to. Wen Qing was probably right. They’d need to come up with a strategy before the situation turned ugly.

Even on strong tranquilizers, the Asset never stayed down for long. In addition to, or perhaps related to, the creature’s healing capacity, it had an absurdly high metabolism. They’d only just gotten it chained down when its huge, glossy eyes flicked open. Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing stepped away from it on instinct, but Wen Chao leaned forward to study its face. Jiang Cheng could still see the welts from last night, shining red against the slick amphibian skin of its back.

“Look at you,” Wen Chao said. He was pacing around it now in long strides, trying to look big. When Jiang Cheng had first picked Princess up from the shelter, he had walked around her like that. He’d been 15 and trying to show her he was the alpha. Now, he knew that wolves didn’t work that way and neither did dogs. He highly doubted fishmen did.

“You’re beautiful, aren’t you?” He flicked it in the side of the face and it winced back. Jiang Cheng thought about reminding Wen Chao that it was against protocol to anthropomorphize the subject and then thought better of it. “Pretty little thing. These nice scientists here think you’re going to be the key to eternal life or some shit, but we know what you really are, don’t we? Just some lost little fishy.” He put his hand to its cheek, tilting its head up like a lover. Then, he smacked it hard across the face.

The asset lunged, blocking Jiang Cheng’s view for a second. There was a shock of bright red blood in the blue light of the room. Wen Chao was screaming and careening back, holding his hand to his chest. Jiang Cheng rushed forwards, but Wen Qing was faster. In a flash, she was at Wen Chao’s side, cooing at him in her best I-should’ve-been-a-doctor voice to let her see, just let her see it, it’s going to be okay, Wen Chao, just let me see. Jiang Cheng maneuvered behind them, carefully scooping up Wen Chao’s pinkie and ring finger and depositing them in Wen Qing’s hand. “We need to get him to a doctor,” she said.

Jiang Cheng nodded, pulling Wen Chao’s good arm over his shoulder and hoisting him up. They made it to the door before Jiang Cheng stopped, looking back at the creature where it was chained to the floor. “One second,” he said, handing off Wen Chao to Wen Qing, who slumped under his weight. Jiang Cheng carefully made his way around the Asset, slowly moving to release its bonds. It jerked around in the chains to see him as he moved behind it. Really he should've tranquilized it first, but he didn’t have time, and he just needed to _handle this one thing_ , so he held his breath and he closed his eyes and he turned the key in the lock. He heard a splash. When he opened his eyes again, the creature was gone, lurking out of sight beneath the surface of one of the pools. Jiang Cheng raced back to the door to trade places with Wen Qing. She charged ahead of him, shouting something about needing to get Wen Chao’s fingers on ice.

Down the bright fluorescent-lit hallway, Wei Wuxian was dancing with a mop, alternately using it as a microphone and a dance partner. Wen Qing’s little brother was laughing at him, clearly in love. Wei Wuxian could be very easy to love. Sometimes, it made Jiang Cheng hate him. “Wei Wuxian,” he called out, pulling a half-unconscious Wen Chao down the hallway with him. “I need you to clean the lab.” Wei Wuxian turned to look at him, taking in the blood on his lab coat with wide eyes. “Quickly.” Jiang Cheng jerked his head meaningfully at the door behind him.

“Okay.” Wei Wuxian nodded and grabbed his supplies. He gave Wen Ning a shrug and a brief goodbye before charging down the hall toward Jiang Cheng. “Are you okay?” he asked, so quiet that, even though everyone else in the hallway had stopped to stare at the Jiang Cheng and his cargo, none of them would be able to hear him.

“I’ll be fine,” Jiang Cheng said. He tried not to sound too tired.

——

Wei Wuxian hated the lab. It was spooky, especially with all this blood on the floor. But, he was really only ever asked to clean it every few weeks or so and usually only once anything that could possibly clue him in to what his brother got up to in there had been well and thoroughly hidden. So, he wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity to snoop. At the very least, he needed to find the piece of machinery that had taken off Wen Chao’s fingers and thank it for its service. Wei Wuxian ran a hand along a tank as he walked past it to his brother’s desk. There, he flipped through a file labeled _Lan WangJi._ A codename probably. It contained a blood work chart, notes on circulatory patterns, and a diagram of a blood cell. The blood cell lacked platelets but had a nucleus and an elliptical shape. Weird. Why was a super duper classified government project researching frog blood? He crept over to the other side of the desk to look through a notepad—a series of recommendations for medical recovery from repeated blunt force trauma in Jiang Cheng’s handwriting. Okay, so maybe not just working on frogs, unless someone was beating the frogs in which case… well, actually that made sense for Wen Chao. The only other interesting thing left in the lab was Wen Qing’s cell phone, which was locked. Wei Wuxian tried to guess the passcode twice (first trying "Wen Ning" and then Wen Ning’s birthday) before giving up and returning to his work.

He rolled his bucket and wringer into the middle of the room and started to run his mop through the pool of blood. Who knew fingers had so much blood in them anyway? His mop was going to be stained forever. Worse, without Wen Ning to talk to, cleaning was boring. He started humming to himself absent-mindedly, moving the mop in rhythm to his own singing and enjoying the echo reverberating back at him. It took him a second to clock that there wasn’t, in fact, an echo in the room. He stopped singing. The echo continued.

“Hello?” Wei Wuxian gently leaned his mop against a wall. “I wasn’t looking at anything. I just thought the desk needed dusting.” He was so going to get fired for this. Like actually fired this time. The singing stopped.

Fuck. Okay, so actually he wasn’t going to get fired. He was going to get murdered. He was going to get murdered, and his blood was going to get all mixed up with Wen Chao’s finger blood, which was just totally gross, and then the frogs, wherever they were keeping them, were going to hop over to his body and _eat him._

There was a rippling sound from one of the pools on the other side of the room. Wei Wuxian moved back toward the wall to pick up his mop. He swung it over his shoulder like a baseball bat and, before he could talk himself out of it, rushed up to the pool.

“Oh.” So, they weren’t studying frogs after all.

Lan WangJi stepped out of the water in front of him. He was _tall_. Tall and scary and… pretty? He wasn’t anything even approaching human-looking, but still, he was… pretty. Maybe it was the bone structure. And the abs. And who let an amphibian have such long eyelashes? Or maybe Wei Wuxian just had some self-reflecting to do, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that there was a 6 foot tall, incredibly attractive fishman standing right in front of him that was maybe going to eat him.

“Uh, hi.” The fishman blinked at him slowly. His eyes were so big and blue and, wait, was that an eye-roll? “Okay. Well, how do you suggest I greet you? You’re… you know!” Wei Wuxian dropped his mop-bat to gesture vaguely at Lan WangJi. He waited a moment for a response and, not receiving one, kept talking anyway.

“So, they call you Lan WangJi?” The fishman just stared at him.

“That seems a bit formal, don’t you think?” The fishman didn’t appear to think much of anything at all about it.

“You look more like a Lan Zhan to me.” And, yes! A reaction! Lan WangJi bristled, the frills at his neck ruffling slightly in either happiness or annoyance. Wei Wuxian smiled.

“Okay, Lan Zhan. What’s it like being a secret government experiment.” Lan WangJi blinked. “Very interesting. But, I’m sure we all feel that way sometimes. When I first met my brother, he treated me like I was an actual alien. Wait! Are you an alien?” Now that was definitely an eye-roll.

“Right. Well, if you’re not an alien, then what are you?” Lan WangJi opened his mouth and, for a second, Wei Wuxian thought he was going to speak. Instead, he began to sing, repeating the tune Wei Wuxian had been humming.

“You like music?” Wei Wuxian started humming along, then harmonizing. This seemed to please Lan WangJi… maybe. It was kind of hard to tell.

They’d been singing like that for a while, when Wei Wuxian, struggling to keep the smile off his face, reached up and put his hand on Lan WangJi’s chest. “Oh!” he exclaimed, and Lan WangJi stopped singing again. “Sorry. It’s just I can feel your heartbeat.” He was staring intensely at the place where his hand met Lan WangJi’s broad chest. It was a bit slimy, but not as slimy as he had expected. “I wonder how many ventricles you have? You know, fish only have two, and humans have four. I guess you must have frog blood, and frogs have three, but—” Lan WangJi raised his own hand to rest over Wei Wuxian’s, and Wei Wuxian looked up into his impossibly big eyes. He felt caught, or like the breath had been taken out of him, like he was about to start a fight, or maybe like he’d just lost one.

“Wei Wuxian?” An arc of warm light flashed into the room as Wen Ning pushed open the door to the lab. As Wei Wuxian turned to face him, he felt the weight on his hand disappear. “What’s taking you so long?” Wen Ning asked. “It’s been like half an hour, and I can’t clean the whole hallway by myself.”

"I'll be right out," We Wuxian said. When he turned back toward the pool, Lan WangJi had already gone under the surface of the water, dark and opaque in the yellow light.


	3. Fish Swim Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mutual pining? In my monsterfucker au? More likely than you think.

It wasn’t like Wei Wuxian set out to date the fishman or anything. It’s just that Lan WangJi seemed really sad in that lab all by himself. Or, okay, he didn’t really seem much of anything—his expression could honestly be a little hard to read sometimes—but Wei Wuxian could tell he wanted the company. So, when no one else was around, he took his breaks in the lab.

The first time had started out a little rocky. Lan WangJi had hidden from him until he had decided that it probably made more sense to call out for Lan Zhan underneath the water than outside of it. So, Wei Wuxian waded knee deep into one of the lab’s pools. He dipped his head into the water and called into it, watching a stream of bubbles erupt from his mouth. He wasn’t sure if Lan WangJi could hear him better that way, but, at any rate, he could see him. Lan Wangji was staring up at Wei Wuxian from the depths; and, not long after that, he had swum up to the surface of the pool, folded his finned arms on the pool’s edge, and rested his chin on them to look out, past Wei Wuxian, into the middle distance. Wei Wuxian sat next to him with his feet in the water, trying not to look too obviously like he was studying his face. If Wei Wuxian had to put a name to Lan WangJi’s expression, he probably would’ve gone with something like diffident but unimpressed would also work _._

“I’m just saying, Lan Zhan. It must get boring sitting around this lab all day with my brother. I thought you could use some company.” Wei Wuxian nudged Lan WangJi with his knee, and Lan Wangji turned his head in his arms to look up at Wei Wuxian with narrowed eyes. Wei Wuxian searched those eyes for any sign of amusement and found mostly annoyance. He sighed.

“Well, I can leave if you don’t want me here,” he said, pulling the leg closer to Lan WangJi’s head out of the pool. He felt a sudden pressure at the spot just above his knee where he’d rolled his work uniform up to wade into the pool. Lan WangJi pushed down on his knee until Wei Wuxian settled back in place on the pool’s edge. His hand was soft and wet. It dampened Wei Wuxian’s pants and skin where it had touched him, and he felt himself shiver, though the water wasn’t really that cold. “Okay.” Wei Wuxian swallowed hard. “I’ll stay then.”

At that, Lan WangJi turned from him to look out at the lab. Wei Wuxian took the opportunity to look at Lan WangJi. He really was beautiful. His skin was almost pearlescent—not shimmering scales, but a slick frog skin that reflected the light in blues and greens. Did he have a layer of mucous glands? Frogs definitely did, but was Lan WangJi a frog or something else? Wei Wuxian was certain he had lungs. He’d felt them expand and contract under his hand the day he’d felt Lan WangJi’s heartbeat. But, frogs have lungs and, still, also breath through their skin. Could he kiss Lan WangJi? Not that Wei Wuxian wanted to, particularly, but he wondered if Lan WangJi would even like that. Did he kiss like a person? Wei Wuxian had heard stories as a child about kissing frogs. Supposedly, it turned them into princes, but what if you just _kissed_ _the frog_? What would that be like?

Though Wei Wuxian couldn’t currently see them, he could picture Lan WangJi’s eyes from memory. They were dark and luminous; bigger than any eyes he’d ever seen, with large reflective pupils that looked blue under the lab’s weird lighting and bright green irises. Would they close if he kissed him? The few times Lan Wangji had made eye contact with him, Wei Wuxian had felt like he could get lost in those eyes. No, not lost. They made him feel… quiet. Like he didn’t have to explain anything or defend himself or entertain anyone. He felt… understood?

Lan WangJi was beautiful, and not just in an alien way. There was something in him, something emanating from him, that drew Wei Wuxian in. He had been kinder to Wei Wuxian than most people in his life, and he hadn’t even said a word to him. Maybe because he couldn’t? Wei Wuxian wasn’t sure about the vocal cords of it all. He’d done some digging into Jiang Cheng and Wen Qing’s files before scaling out for Lan WangJi, but apparently they knew very little about Lan WangJi’s anatomy outside of the blood tests and other somatic cell samples they’d taken. It seemed like they were still pretty early into their research. Their attempts to x-ray him had only resulted in a broken x-ray machine if Wen Qing’s almost pathologically precise notes were to be believed. Wei Wuxian could imagine the event in vivid detail. Lan WangJi, surprised by the flash of light, swinging his muscular arm into the machine and then through it, dividing it clean in half. He could understand Wen Qing’s frustration sort of—x-ray machines weren’t cheap to replace, especially when they weren’t even able to get an image to prove it was worth giving the whole thing another shot—but also, the idea of Lan WangJi’s strength… did something to him. Oddly, you wouldn’t have expected that kind of strength from his body, which was muscular but slender and certainly didn’t indicate that he was as paranormally strong as the notes on the x-ray machine had seemed to suggest. His back though—Wei Wuxian let his eyes trace from Lan WangJi’s strong shoulders to where his torso disappeared into the pool below and wait. Were those scars?

Lan WangJi jerked up and moved swiftly to the other side of the pool to eye Wei Wuxian suspiciously. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Wei Wuxian said. “I’m sorry, Lan Zhan. I didn’t mean to.” He hadn’t even really realized he’d reached down to run his finger along one of the tiny white scars on Lan WangJi’s back until he had jerked away. “I should have asked. I’m sorry.”

Lan WangJi moved slowly back across the pool, his eyes moving back and forth cautiously between Wei Wuxian’s face and hand. “I just,” Wei Wuxian started, trying to make his face look as kind and open as possible. “I’m just wondering how you got them is all. It looks like it must have hurt.” Very slowly, Lan WangJi folded his arms on the side of the pool again and, even slower, lowered the side of his head down on them so he could keep his eyes on Wei Wuxian. “Did you get, I don’t know, caught by a fishhook or a boat motor or something?” he asked. The thought made Wei Wuxian angry, but not nearly as angry as he felt when Lan WangJi shifted his big dark eyes away from him again to settle on an electric whip laying on one of the tables.

Wei Wuxian had seen this whip before.

——

Wei Wuxian had only met Wen Chao a few days ago. Of course, he’d heard that Wen Rouhan’s son was being given some fake cushy job looking over the scientists, and he’d heard enough of Jiang Cheng’s vague complaints to know that the guy was an incompetant mess, but he’d never actually met him until that night. Wei Wuxian had been working with Wen Ning, cleaning the men’s bathroom, when Wen Chao strode confidently in the door and to the sink. He placed something on the ivory tile Wen Ning had just wiped down and began to wash his hands. Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning started scrambling toward the door, but Wen Chao interrupted them.

“No. No. That’s alright. Go on,” he said. Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning stopped in their path toward the door but didn’t resume cleaning. Instead, Wei Wuxian’s eyes drifted over to the device next to the sink. It looked a little like a cattle prod, but, at the end of its short hilt where it should have had two plug-looking prongs, it had a thick metal cord. “Look, but don’t touch,” Wen Chao said, catching Wei Wuxian’s eyes. “That lovely dingus there is called Zidian.”

He finished washing his hands and moved across the room to the urinal, where he stood with his hands on his hips and began to piss. “It means purple lightning. My family confiscated it from one of the minor clans a few generations ago. I think it was your mother’s family, Wei Wuxian. Anyway, it’s an antique. Molded grip handle. Low-current, high-voltage electrified cord. That’s for you to know, not to tell.” He nodded slightly from his place in front of the urinal like he was letting them in on an important secret. “I’m Wen Chao. Security.” 

Finally— _finally!_ —he finished, zipped up his pants, and turned back around to face them. Wen Ning, clearly unsure of what else to do, offered him a clean towel, but Wen Chao waved him off. “A man washes his hands before or after tending to his needs,” he said. “That tells you a lot about that man. He does it both times? Points to a weakness of character.” He looked both Wen Ning and Wei Wuxian over for a moment, and his lip curled up slightly in distaste. “Though I wouldn’t expect either of you to know what it’s like to be a man. ‘Men’ like you know nothing of conduct, of compliance, of humility. You’re lucky I’m here.” Wen Chao grabbed Zidian, and gave the two men a weird, too-broadly smile. “I’ll get things straightened up around here,” he said, and left the bathroom.

“Wow. He’s even worse than Wen Qing said.” At Wen Chao’s exit, Wen Ning slumped and inhaled sharply like he’d been holding his breath through the whole interaction, but Wei Wuxian’s eyes hadn’t moved from the place where the whip had sat. He’d seen Wen Ning wipe down that counter less than five minutes ago. But now, Wei Wuxian watched a small red dot extend from where the whip had been, diffusing in the water on the countertop’s surface. The white tile was littered with little drops of blood.

——

The cleaner had come to see him several times since they’d first met five days ago. Lan WangJi didn’t mind. He was pretty, maybe a little annoying, but nice, and it was just nice to have someone around who treated him like a person. The two scientists looked at him like a specimen, the angry man like an adversary, but Wei Wuxian just looked at him.

Wei Wuxian. That was his name. Wei Wuxian, who took him in with bright, delighted eyes—happy, human eyes that crinkled up at the corners when he laughed—who had touched the scars on his back gently and had moved slowly to forecast his movements ever since to avoid scaring Lan WangJi again. He was charming. He was obnoxious. He was stupid and also kind. 

Wei Wuxian was, unfortunately, the One.

By their fifth meeting, it was clear that Wei Wuxian planned on coming to see him every day. Lan WangJi didn’t have a problem with that. The angry man hadn’t been around since he’d bit him, and though LanWangJi doubted Wei Wuxian was personally responsible for that, the look he had given the angry man’s weapon during their second meeting had made Lan WangJi feel. 

He felt something. Was it safe? Owned? Protected? He knew humans distinguished between the words, though he wasn’t always entirely clear on what those distinctions were. The difference between a _god_ and a _healer_ had been a tough one to get straight. So had _love_ and _like_ and _friends_ and _romance_ , which he was given to understand could mean two different things depending on whether the word was capitalized. Once, when he was much younger and much freer than he was now, a young boy had brought Lan WangJi a dictionary, likely in the hope of teaching him how to speak. It hadn’t worked; partly, at least, because Lan WangJi hadn’t tried very hard to learn. He’d read each of the words and memorized their many meanings, but they hadn’t quite made sense to him. For one, they hadn’t seemed useful. It wasn’t like he didn’t know what he felt. He didn’t need their language to know his own mind. Now, more than ever, Lan WangJi knew _exactly_ what he felt, and he had his own way of expressing it.

So, during their fifth meeting, he placed his hand gently over Wei Wuxian’s where it rested on the side of his pool. He’d done this, or something similar to it, the first time they’d met. Honestly, it had been brash, but Wei Wuxian, for whom brashness seemed to be a life philosophy, had started it. He placed his hand on Lan WangJi’s chest and—Can he feel my heartbeat? Can he feel how fast it is? Lan WangJi knew his face could be hard to read for humans, but his heartbeat must have given him away. This time, when he placed his hand on Wei Wuxian’s, Wei Wuxian had stiffened under him, paused, and then rotated his hand to run his fingers against the inside of Lan WangJi’s palm. He watched Lan WangJi carefully and, though Lan WangJi hadn’t moved his facial features at all, seemed to see something in his expression that made him smile softly and cast his eyes down to their hands. Lan WangJi didn’t know what that meant at all.

Wei Wuxian was about to do something. Lan WangJi couldn’t be sure what, but he was sure he could figure it out. Wei Wuxian had whispered the name he’d given him— _Lan Zhan?_ —and leaned forward. Maybe he would’ve pressed their foreheads together or maybe he was trying to get a look at Lan WangJi’s back again or maybe… maybe he would’ve kissed him, not that it was something Lan WangJi was expecting or even really wanted from him. Just because Lan WangJi was feeling things didn’t mean Wei Wuxian was. People had their own impenetrable minds; they were always feeling something, and Lan WangJi had to work hard at seeing a person correctly before he could even begin to guess what that something could be. Regardless, someone interrupted them. Two someones. The scientists walked through the door to the lab, and Wei Wuxian darted backward, throwing himself behind one of the rolling metal desks near the pool.

“Well, what do you want me to do?” The male scientist was being loud. He gestured wildly as he stalked away from the female scientist toward Lan WangJi’s pool. In his nearby hiding place, Wei Wuxian’s body tensed.

“I want you to grow a fucking backbone, Jiang Cheng,” the woman said. She was also being loud. Lan WangJi had found that people were often loud in this lab.

“And what? Commit Treason?” The male scientist had stopped moving forward to turn on the female one. Wei Wuxian relaxed, and then bent closer to the desk to listen better. “They’re going to dissect it, Wen Qing. I don’t know what you think I can do about that.”

“You could’ve backed me up. You could’ve said something, instead of just standing there listening to them talk about killing him.” She was chewing on her bottom lip.

“Well, I _didn’t_ say anything. So, now what? You want me to break it out?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Really? Because it sure sounds like that’s what you’re saying.”

“I didn't say that. If that’s what you heard, that’s on you. I’m just talking about advocating for him. I mean we watched Wen Chao basically torture him, and now that he’s lost a finger or two, he thinks we should just kill him? You know that’s bullshit.”

“You keep saying him.”

“It. Whatever. Even an animal deserves better than this.” Wei Wuxian met Lan WangJi eyes for a moment. Wide eyes, pinched lips. Alert?

No. Scared.

“And what about our research?” the woman was saying. “There’s still so much we can learn about its abilities.”

“We can learn from the dissection.” The male scientist was quieter now. The female one shook her head a few times. “I’m done having this argument,” he said. And then he was out the door again, gone to whatever lay in the golden light outside of it. The female scientist closed her eyes tightly and gripped the back of one of the desk chairs hard enough for her knuckles to turn white. Then, another person spoke. Wei Wuxian stood up from his hiding place, schooling his features into a smile just as Wen Qing opened her eyes to look at him.

“So,” he said. “You want to break him out?”


	4. Debris floating in the water—

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three renegades do a government subterfuge! Jiang Cheng has a bad time! Wei Wuxian finally fucks a fish! (but due to both my own cowardice and my complete inability to write porn, it's not explicit. sorry.)

Wen Qing wasn’t sure how she’d gotten here. Here being a 24-hour pie shop at about 3 in the morning with Wei Wuxian and her little brother. They were sitting in a booth with vinyl, mint-colored seats. Sickly green light from the diner’s neon display sign filtered in through the window to her right, coloring the white sugar packets Wei Wuxian was trying to stack into a house of cards. This probably wasn’t a good place to plan government subterfuge, and she still couldn’t believe that was really what they were doing, but…

“We could store him at my house!” Wei Wuxian was saying. He moved bodily to face Wen Ning, who was sitting in the booth beside him, and knocked down his sugar tower in his excitement. As Wei Wuxian debated the logistics of hiding the asset in his bathtub, Wen Ning silently scooped up the packets and deposited them back in the container at the edge of the table. And yet, his eyes never left Wei Wuxian’s face. It was weird to watch her brother watch him. She’d known, of course, about Wen Ning’s little crush. She’d had to sit through enough dinner conversations about how Wei Wuxian told the most hilarious joke today or Wei Wuxian is the smartest person I’ve ever met (obviously, not including you, Jie) to know exactly how her brother felt about him. But, still. It was weird to see up close how entirely Wei Wuxian could capture Wen Ning’s attention. And it wasn’t even as if she couldn’t understand it. She was taken in by him too. She must have been, otherwise, why would she be here, plotting what they were hypothetically plotting. “I mean, I know he can’t live in a bathtub,” Wei Wuxian said, turning his whole body again in the booth to point back at her. “But, just until it rains again and we can send him back to the ocean through the canal. He is from the ocean, right?”

Wen Qing considered him for a second. “You want to store a government asset your brother wants to dissect in a bathroom you share with him?”

“Well, it’s  _ my _ bathroom. He has his own.” She raised her eyebrows at him.

“I mean, I guess,” he said, “it would make more sense for you guys to hide him. You want to take him to your apartment instead?” Wei Wuxian raised  _ his  _ eyebrows at  _ her,  _ and Wen Qing sighed.

“Yes,” she said, “he’s from the ocean.”

Wei Wuxian smiled, and Wen Qing tried not to let herself wonder why the guy her brother has a crush on would be so excited to have a fishman in his bathroom. Like, she had a few guesses, and, you know, to each their own, but she was still trying not to think about it.

They sat quietly for a moment. Then, Wen Ning said, “Wait, even if we can get in and out without anyone noticing us, how are we going to get past the security cameras?” Wen Qing smiled at her brother. She had been worried about the security cameras too and was more than a little proud her brother had thought to bring them up.

“Oh, I’ll just turn them off,” Wei Wuxian said.

Wen Ning and Wen Qing shot each other confused glances over the table. “You can just turn them off?” Wen Ning asked.

“It’s an IP camera system, so yeah. I can just go in and turn them off.” Wei Wuxian said it like it was really just that simple.

“And how long have you known how to do that?” Wen Qing could feel a stress headache beginning just behind her left eyebrow.

“Well, forever?” Wei Wuxian looked confused. “Cause, you know, I designed the system?”

Wen Qing practically shouted, “You what?” just as their waiter stepped forward to place a piece of wobbly radioactive-looking key lime pie in front of Wen Ning. She cleared her throat, apologized, and smiled up at the waiter in a way she hoped read as genial rather than deranged until he left again. Then, as Wen Ning dug into his pie, she repeated as calmly and politely as she could, “You what?”

“I won a contest,” Wei Wuxian said casually, “when I was fifteen.”

“And you’re a janitor.” It wasn’t a question, exactly, but she still felt like she needed an answer. It wasn’t that she thought there was anything wrong with being a janitor. Wen Ning was one and he was the best, kindest, and most important person in the entire world as far as she was concerned. But, she also thought that Wen Ning made sense. His particular skill set wasn’t very marketable to people in their line of work. She sometimes fantasized about running away from the jobs the Wen family had assigned them and finding some small town where he could become a kindergarten teacher or pediatrician or something. But, as it was, they had both trained to become doctors and then been told to become scientists instead. And he had failed the test —too kind, she suspected, too good—and she had passed. That made sense. Wei Wuxian was a fucking enigma. At the moment, that enigma was blushing.

“I, uh, I failed the test,” he said.

“Okay, but how?”

“Same reason as Wen Ning. I can’t keep a secret.” Ah, so he shared her theory on Wen Ning, even if he characterized it more sardonically than she would.

“I don’t believe that for a second.” He blushed harder, looking out the window into the neon green light.

“It’s not a lie, exactly. I just chose the answers that I knew would force them to reject me.”

And, suddenly, all the pieces started clicking into place for Wen Qing. “You  _ threw _ the test.”

“Not exactly,” he said, which basically confirmed it. Wen Ning’s mouth gaped open and a small piece of pie filling dropped out of it onto his chin.

“Why would you do that?” Wen Ning asked. He wiped his mouth on a napkin and stared up at Wei Wuxian with those big puppy eyes of his.

“I meant every answer I put down. I really believe in that stuff—government transparency, oversight, whatever.” He was getting defensive, but there was something wistful in his eyes too. Wen Qing believed him. Looking him over, she could see the current of moral outrage surging just below the surface. Wei Wuxian could probably burn a whole world to the ground doing what he thought was right. “And, also, Jiang Cheng just kinda needed something to be his thing, you know. He needed to be the best at this.”

“So, you threw the test for your brother?” Wen Ning asked, still clearly reeling. Wei Wuxian just shrugged.

Yeah, Wen Qing believed him. Worse, she envied him. Wei Wuxian was everything he said he was and more. He wasn’t good, but he was trying to be, and he didn’t seem to care what the consequences were, least of all when they affected himself. And Wen Qing...

Wen Qing wasn’t normally like this . Her latent self-righteous streak didn’t usually suit her, b ut this whole situation was making her feel completely out of control. She was used to feeling powerless, even trapped. She’d spent a lot of her life feeling that way —just doing what she was told, taking the job she was supposed to take, and protecting her brother. This, though? This was different. She didn’t feel powerless at all. She felt like she had electricity in her fingertips. She could see the same electricity in Wei Wuxian, who, if she stopped kidding herself for a moment, she could admit she actually liked a great deal. She could see it in Wen Ning too, whose usual meekness had disappeared the second they’d told him the plan. The three of them had this endless potential to do anything. She just hoped she was doing the  _ right _ thing. She couldn’t shake the suspicion that all this static electricity would only get them all shocked.

——

All told, the breaking in part was actually pretty easy. Sure, they all worked there, but still. It was, like, surprisingly easy. Wei Wuxian wasn’t entirely sure what he expected. Certainly, he’d expected someone to notice when the security camera network went down, but if they did, he hadn’t yet noticed them. Maybe he had just expected to get caught. But, if that was true, then why was he doing this in the first place? (Answer: Lan WangJi). Why would he risk so much for Lan WangJi, who he barely knew and who probably didn’t even really like him that much? (Answer: Well, he happened to like Lan WangJi _very_ much). Would he be doing this for anyone else? (Answer: Actually, yeah, probably).

It had been three days since their conversation in the pie shop, but they’d had to wait until Jiang Cheng was out of the lab, something they could luckily figure out in advance. Jiang Cheng, master of government security and classified information that he was, also kept a detailed weekly itinerary in a little leather-bound planner. Wei Wuxian almost felt bad about how easy it was to steal and make a copy of his schedule. But, not really  _ that _ bad. So, during their Friday night shift, the second Jiang Cheng left for his meeting, Wen Qing had watched the little red light on the cameras flicker off and had taken a fire extinguisher to one of the vertical tanks in the lab. Then, she had requested two cleaners, and Wei Wuxian and Wen Ning had volunteered. They had let Wen Qing lead them through the facility, the two of them carrying an oversized laundry cart full of towels while she ranted to them about flooding in the lab for the benefit of anyone in the hallway who might be listening in—as if the flooding wasn’t itself obvious from the massive puddle collecting near the lab's doors. So, yeah, breaking in was easy. But, breaking out probably wouldn’t be.

Wen Qing spun around on Wei Wuxian practically the second they got through the lab’s doors and asked, “How are we going to get him into the cart?”

Lan WangJi was nowhere to be found, likely hiding out of sight in the floor tank. “You probably just scared him when the glass broke,” Wei Wuxian responded. “I’ll just talk to him.” And, then, instead of talking, Wei Wuxian began to hum, loudly enough for Wen Qing to shoot a panicked glance at Wen Ning. They carried on a conversation in hushed tones behind him as he made his way over to the side of the pool and sat on the edge, like he had so many times before, still humming.

“Won’t someone hear him?” Wen Qing asked.

“Sure,” Wen Ning said, meeting her gaze calmly, “but he’s always like this. They’ll just think we’re cleaning.”

There was a ripple in the water below Wei Wuxian, and then another, and then Lan WangJi surfaced and, resting his elbows on the pool’s side, turned to look up at Wei Wuxian. He took a moment just to stare at him and then began singing back. Now that Wei Wuxian was used to it, it didn’t sound like an echo or a copy of his own voice; it wasn’t quite human enough. There was something almost musical about it, more like a harp or violin than a voice. He was beautiful. Wen Qing cleared her throat behind them.

“He sings?” she asked.

“You didn’t know?”

“I didn’t know.”

She stepped towards the pool, her eyes curious but also a bit soft, and Wen Ning followed cautiously after her, his own eyes wide with disbelief as he took in Lan WangJi for the first time. Realizing that they were not, in fact, alone, Lan WangJi startled a bit, sinking down into the water until only his eyes breached the surface. “Hey. Hey, Lan Zhan,” Wei Wuxian said, turning back to the water. “It’s okay. They’re helping me. We’re gonna get you out of here.”

Wei Wuxian gradually coaxed Lan WangJi out of the water, and he and Wen Ning were about to try and help him into the laundry cart when Wen Qing, who had been staring at Lan WangJi like she was shocked by him, as if she hadn’t already been studying him for months, interrupted suddenly.

“Wait,” she said. “He, um. He needs to scratch me.”

“I thought I was gonna hit you with the”—Wei Wuxian gestured wildly to the fire extinguisher where it lay amidst the water and broken glass. 

“He wouldn’t hit me with something. He would scratch me.” The certainty in her voice was chilling as she walked up to Lan WangJi, stopping only a few feet away from him. “You can understand me, can’t you?” Lan WangJi only blinked a few times, but she kept going. “I need you to do this, and I need you to make it look real, okay? It’s okay. I’ll be okay.”

“He’ll hurt you, Jie!” Wen Ning protested, as if that wasn’t obvious, as if that wasn’t the point. Lan WangJi cast a furtive glance over to Wei Wuxian who only shrugged.

“It’s her decision.”

And, so, Lan WangJi batted one long-clawed hand at Wen Qing, and she crumpled down like a rag doll. Wen Ning let out a quiet, animal noise and staggered a few steps toward his sister. Wei Wuxian put a hand on his shoulder gently to stop him. Then, he let his instincts take over. “Okay. Okay,” he said. “We have to get out of here. Lan Zhan, get in the cart.” Lan WangJi was staring down at Wen Qing, his expression as unreadable as it always was. “Lan Zhan,  _ get _ in the  _ cart _ ,” Wei Wuxian repeated, and this time he complied, dumping himself bodily into the laundry cart without any help from the others. “Okay. Wen Ning, I need you with me. Are you with me?”

“I’m here.” His voice was distant.

“She’s gonna be okay.”

“I know,” he said, steadier this time. “I’m here.”

“Alright.” Wei Wuxian’s knuckles turned white where he gripped the cart. Wen Ning placed the now-wet towels back in the cart, gently covering Lan WangJi. “Let’s do this.”

——

The two of them directed the cart through the hallways again and into the laundry rooms at the back of the building. Past the spinning laundry machines and the room where the facility stored its spare lab coats and linens, there was a small maintenance exit leading out into the garage. It was the same place Wei Wuxian would usually meet with Jiang Cheng after work, but, this time, Wen Ning, trusting that he wasn’t important enough to be recognized by security, had parked his grandmother’s van next to Jiang Chiang’s little green Cadillac. The van wasn’t exactly nondescript, with all its florist shop decals and the stack of yet-to-be-delivered lilies in the back, but it was entirely nonthreatening. Wen Ning had told the one security guard who had thought to question him earlier that night that he was delivering flowers for a birthday celebration, and the van had been completely ignored ever since.

Wei Wuxian was still in the laundry room, cleaning the wet towels they’d used to start mopping up the laboratory when Wen Chao came rushing in looking like he was about to pop a vein in his neck. Jiang Cheng stepped in after him, moving fast but almost completely catatonic until he noticed Wei Wuxian and paled about seven shades.

“Can I help you guys?” Wei Wuxian asked, looking for all the world like the picture of innocence as he shoved another armful of wet towels into one of the machines mounted on the wall. Wen Chao didn’t respond. He just marched up to Wei Wuxian’s cart and dug into the stacks of wet towels, throwing them out onto the floor around him.

“Uh,” Wei Wuxian met Jiang Cheng with wide eyes as Wen Chao hunched further into the cart. “Is he okay?”

It took Jiang Cheng a moment to respond. He blinked a few times, and cleared his throat, and then said, “I’m afraid it’s mostly classified, but there’s been a break-in.”

“What?” Wei Wuxian said, and okay maybe he wasn’t  _ the best _ actor, and maybe his eyes had darted for a moment, just a half-second really, toward the maintenance door, because Wen Chao immediately stopped digging. He spun around on his heels and ran out through the maintenance door without another word.

Jiang Cheng sighed deeply. “I should probably go after him.”

“Sure,” Wei Wuxian considered. “Or, you could not do that.”

“Where’s your friend?”

“Wen Ning?”

“Sure.”

“I let him leave early. I’m covering for him. I know I’m not supposed to do that, but I figured all we had left was laundry anyways so I—”

“Relax. You’re not in trouble. I just wanted... His sister got hurt is all.”

Wei Wuxian didn’t have to fake his concern. “Oh wow. Is she gonna be alright?”

“Yeah. I think so.” Jiang Cheng wasn’t faking any of the concern on his face either. Wei Wuxian gave him a once over and, yeah, yeah, something was definitely up.

“You like her.”

“Who told you that? I mean, we’re colleagues. We’re not— It doesn’t matter if I—”

“You like her!” This time Wei Wuxian drew out the _like_ as a child would. He was being as annoying as possible, partially to get his brother’s mind off of Lan WangJi, but mostly because, well, he just liked annoying Jiang Cheng. And it’d been a while since he’d had any really good ammo. “That’s unfortunate. Between you and me, I think she’s more A-Jie’s type if you know what I mean.”

Jiang Cheng thought about that. He was now thoroughly distracted and thoroughly annoyed, but he also seemed genuinely interested. Poor Jiang Cheng. “Did her brother tell you that?” he asked, all earnestness. Poor, poor Jiang Cheng.

“Nah. I can just kind of sense these things, you know.”

“Shut up,” Jiang Cheng said, mostly affectionate. He narrowed his eyes at Wei Wuxian and crossed his arms across his chest. “Get back to work before I report you.”

——

When Wei Wuxian got home that morning, only about half an hour before Jiang Cheng, Wen Ning answered the door. “I put him in the bathtub,” Wen Ning said, handing Wei Wuxian his keys.

“Thank you,” Wei Wuxian said. Then, grimacing, “They took Wen Qing to Yiling Hospital.”

“Right,” Wen Ning said, still sounding half-dazed. He blinked a few times and then looked up at Wei Wuxian. “He, um, your friend... He doesn’t like the dog.”

“Good. Dogs are awful.”

Wen Ning frowned. “I like dogs.”

“That makes sense for you.” Wei Wuxian put his hand on Wen Ning’s shoulder and maneuvered past him, switching their positions in the doorway. “Tell me how Wen Qing is doing when you get a chance.”

“Yeah.” Wen Ning’s mouth twisted a little. “Just be careful, okay?”

“I’m always careful,” Wei Wuxian said. Wen Ning just stared at him for a second. Then, he shrugged, turned around, and started walking the several blocks to where he’d parked his van.

As Wei Wuxian shut the door behind him, he was immediately confronted by Princess. It was just sitting calmly in the entryway staring at him, seemingly placated by whatever Wen Ning had done with it in the time he’d been waiting for Wei Wuxian. Still, it was a really fucking scary dog, okay, and so Wei Wuxian walked as fast as he could past it and down the hallway to his little wing of the house.

“Hello?” Wei Wuxian knocked on the bathroom door and then rolled his eyes at himself. He’d just spent the entire night undermining the government, he was dead on his feet tired, and here he was acting like something between a babysitter in a horror movie and a kid on a first date. He straightened his spine and walked into the room with as much confidence as he could muster, and then immediately dropped the act and rushed forward when he noticed Lan WangJi in the bathtub. Lan WangJi was making a sort of hiccuping sound, his mouth opening and closing like a… well, like a fish honestly, but not in a good way; not that Wei Wuxian usually thought that fish were particularly good looking, but anyway that wasn’t the point. Something was clearly very wrong with him. “What is it?” Wei Wuxian asked. “How can I help?” Then, he remembered “Oh, fuck. You can’t answer me. Uh.” He slipped his hand into the water and brought it to his lips. “More salt… You need more salt?” Then, he ran out of the bathroom, down the hallway, and into the kitchen.

He was cradling an entire canister of table salt in his arms when Jiang Cheng walked in. Wei Wuxian made a sound that was meant to be a laugh but came out more like a yelp of pain. “Hi! Are you early? You seem early.”

“I’m actually kind of late.” Jiang Cheng sounded tired, which was really saying something because, while Wei Wuxian always knew when Jiang Cheng was tired (he was usually tired), he was also usually trying to hide it. Jiang Cheng squinted at the salt in his brother’s arms. “What are you doing right now?”

“We’re, um, out of Epsom salt.”

For a second, it looked like Jiang Cheng was going to push him on this. Instead, he just sighed. “You know what? I don’t care.”

Wei Wuxian shot him a quick smile and then skedaddled back to his bathroom, dumping more than half the canister into the water. “Come on,” he said. “Come on.” Lan WangJi’s hiccuping morphed into these little choked off gasps that reminded Wei Wuxian of the panic attacks he sometimes had. Without really thinking, he pulled off his shirt and scooted into the bathtub with Lan WangJi, holding him to his chest and deliberately breathing as slowly and deeply as he could. Their anatomies weren’t the same, obviously, but maybe... Though he’d never articulated it, even to himself, Wei Wuxian had always kind of wanted someone to hold him like this when he felt hurt. When he was a kid, Jiang Yanli had done that for him, but that was a long time ago. Now, she had her own life and new people to take care of, and he could, well, he could do what he could for Lan WangJi. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “I calculated the salinity of the water in your tank and this should work. I mean, it's not perfect, but Wen Qing said it fine. At least, temporarily. You’re gonna be okay. Just breath, okay? Can you just breathe?” And,  oh , he was crying. That was weird.

Lan WangJi had gone still against him. He turned slightly to look up at Wei Wuxian and gently pressed his face into Wei Wuxian’s wet cheek. And he started humming again—the same tune from the day they met. They stayed there like that for a long time, pressed against each other, hyperaware of all the places where skin met scales. Then, slowly, Wei Wuxian kissed the side of Lan WangJi’s admittedly kind of odd mouth. He maneuvered himself around Lan WangJi, pulling himself out from behind him to straddle his hips instead. He slid their lips together, linking his arms around Lan WangJi’s neck and leaning into him. Then, he pulled away abruptly, half-breathless. “Oh my god! I didn’t even ask if you, like, kiss or whatever. I’m totally taking advantage of you. I’m so sorry. Holy shit.”

He had been starting to ramble, but he cut himself off, swallowing hard as Lan WangJi lifted his hands to his chest. “Oh,” Wei Wuxian gasped. “Okay.” Lan WangJi cast his large eyes up from his chest to his face. His hands were cold and perfectly still where they rested on Wei Wuxian, and his eyes narrowed just a little. Wei Wuxian nodded quickly, and, suddenly, Lan WangJi’s hands were moving again, his fingertips tracing the two crescent scars just below Wei Wuxian's nipples. He leaned in to kiss Wei Wuxian’s neck, then the shell of his ear, then his lips again.

They stayed like that until long after Wei Wuxian’s fingers had gone pruny and the salt had dried out his skin. Still, he felt like he could stay like this forever, curled in the cool water with Lan WangJi’s arms around him. Honestly, it might have been the nicest morning of his life.

——

When Wei Wuxian woke up around 2 pm, he had several new bruises and a crick in his neck from falling asleep on the tile. He pulled himself up on his forearms to look over at Lan WangJi where he was still asleep in the bathtub and smiled. Contrary to popular belief, this kind of behavior was entirely unlike him. Not the breaking into government facilities part—no, that was pretty par for the course—but this? The... the rest of it? Wei Wuxian couldn’t believe that he got to have this.

He stood up, checking to see if his clothes from last night were still wet (they were), and dragging a towel down from a hook on the wall to wrap around his waist. He was smoothing his hair in the mirror and getting ready to brush his teeth when he noticed something different about his reflection. Sure, everyone thinks they’re going to look different after their first time, but, while he’d never had the opportunity to test his theory, Wei Wuxian had long doubted how much sex could actually change a person. That being said, Wei Wuxian _was_ changed. He moved his hands up his torso in disbelief, looking back and forth between his own reflection and Lan WangJi, who was just starting to blink awake in the tub. Whatever Lan WangJi had done to him, Wei Wuxian’s scars were completely gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long delay... finals... you know how it is. More soon.


	5. And, then, a lamp floats by—

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lang WangJi deserves to bite people... as a treat.
> 
> A short one today... just two bros... talking... chatting... repressing their feelings...

There’d been a break-in at the facility. Jiang Cheng was so tired.

They’d been in a meeting when it had happened. He’d been sitting with Wen Chao and Wen Ruohan, dutifully laying out the necessary funding/equipment/etc for an ideal dissection of the asset, and, all the while, Wen Qing was lying in a pool of her own blood and broken glass. By the time, he and Wen Chao had found her, she’d probably been lying there for ten minutes. She’d been sent to the hospital immediately, and he’d been assured as they’d taken her away that it wasn’t as bad as it looked; likely just a concussion and some ugly scars. She would heal. But, still, he couldn’t help feeling like he should have been there to… protect her or something. Someone had turned off the security cameras and taken the asset and Wen Qing was in the hospital and Wen Chao was fucking pissed and Jesus Christ they’d scratched his goddamn Cadillac. Jiang Cheng could count his good days on one hand; his bad days were innumerable, and yet, this—this one was going to go in the fucking books. No one knew who had done this. No one even had any guesses. Except for Jiang Cheng. Jiang Cheng could only think of one person who had both the means and opportunity, who knew exactly how to shut those cameras down, and who could slip in and out of Nightless Facility without anyone even blinking an eye. And so, Jiang Cheng was _not_ thinking, and he hadn’t said anything either.

They had found Wei Wuxian in the laundry room. Jiang Cheng and Wen Chao had questioned him for a solid hour after Wen Chao’s third sweep of the parking lot proved fruitless. According to him, he and Wen Ning had helped Wen Qing soak up the water from the broken tank and then gone to wash the towels. Then, Wei Wuxian had told Wen Ning to leave early while he finished up the laundry. That’s all there was to it. Jiang Cheng had watched Wen Chao run him through that story no less than 6 times, and, all the while, he had wondered if Wei Wuxian knew what question they were pointedly not asking. Did he know about the asset? Or, maybe Wei Wuxian had nothing to do with it at all. Maybe that thing they’d been running tests on the last three months had finally grown resentful enough to resist them. It had broken its tank, then hidden, laid in wait for Wen Qing to be alone in the lab again. Then, it had attacked her. There weren’t any protections against something like that. Frankly, none of them had thought it was smart enough to formulate a plan with that many steps, but they definitely could have been wrong. Then again, who had turned off the cameras? Who had been driving the flower van it had allegedly escaped in? And why?

Now, a full 8 hours of paperwork and interrogations later, Jiang Cheng was finally going home. He drove his poor scratched Cadillac back to the townhouse he shared with his brother. It was weird driving home alone. Usually, Wei Wuxian would spend the drive cracking jokes or singing along to some awful garbage on the radio or asking him questions he couldn’t answer about his day. But, today, they’d decided it was probably better for him to take the bus home rather than wait around indefinitely for Jiang Cheng to be done cleaning up this mess.

Jiang Cheng missed him. But if he had had anything to do with all this, Jiang Cheng was going to fucking kill him.

He sat in the driveway for a few minutes with his head resting on the steering wheel, just breathing, trying not to think the worst, and failing. Maybe Wei Wuxian was being extorted. Maybe some completely unrelated person had figured out how to shut down the cameras. Maybe it had been a freak localized power outage that affected only the cameras and nothing else in the facility. God damn it.

Jiang Cheng went inside. He pet his dog, he poured a cup of stale cold coffee, and, after a moment of just soaking in the quiet, he decided he wanted a shower. And so, for the second time in 24 hours, he was surprised to walk right up to Wei Wuxian on his way to do something else. He was coming out of his bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. When he saw Jiang Cheng, he closed the door behind him and crossed his arms over his chest in a quick defensive gesture.

“You’re home,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“I was just taking a shower.”

“Your hair’s not wet.” Jiang Cheng really didn’t want to have this conversation—the one about just what exactly had happened that day—right now. He’d been hoping to get at least a little bit of sleep before his brother started bald-faced lying to him, but no such luck.

“Well,” Wei Wuxian said, smiling. “I was wearing a shower cap, so…” He shrugged.

“Sure. I'm going to take a shower now though. If you don’t mind.” Jiang Cheng tried to shuffle past Wei Wuxian, but he moved to block his path again, arms still folded tightly against his bare chest. 

“Why don’t you use your own shower?” He said. 

“Because my shower head is broken. Why won’t you let me use yours?”

“You can.” Wei Wuxian was still smiling, shaking his head jovially like Jiang Cheng was the weird one. “Of course you can! Just—Just give me a second to clean up.”

Wei Wuxian turned around to slip back into the bathroom, but, before he could close the door behind him, Jiang Cheng pushed past him. He took in the room quickly. There was a heap of wet clothes in one corner, a canister of salt next to the sink, and, in the bathtub, … “Shit.”

“Jiang Cheng,” Wei Wuxian said from behind him. “I can explain.”

But, Jiang Cheng didn’t stick around for whatever that explanation might’ve followed. Instead, he turned and walked all the way through the house and out the front door again. Ignoring Wei Wuxian, who was shouting at him, trying to get in front of him, trying to block his path, Jiang Cheng got into his car. Just slightly faster than was safe, he pulled it violently into the street, leaving Wei Wuxian alone in the driveway.

——

“Fuck,” Wei Wuxian said as he watched his brother speed away. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he said as he made his way back through the entryway and the kitchen and the hallway. “God fucking damn it,” he said as he entered the bathroom and closed the door behind him. He was still dressed only in a towel, which wasn’t ideal, but, at this point, he had bigger problems. Lan WangJi stared at him placidly from the bathtub as he walked across the room to slump down on the floor next to him with his back against the tub.

“This is a big problem, you know?” Wei Wuxian said to him. He could feel Lan WangJi’s eyes on the back of his head. “He could ruin everything in a second. And I don’t know where he’s gone. And I don’t have a car.” Lan WangJi lifted wet arms out of the tub and set them gently around Wei Wuxian’s shoulders. “I don’t suppose you know how to fix this?” Wei Wuxian asked, turning his head slightly to see Lan WangJi in his peripheral vision. “We can’t send you back to the ocean until it rains. If they find you before then, I don’t know what they’ll—” Lan WangJi rested his chin on Wei Wuxian’s shoulder and Wei Wuxian sighed deeply. “I just found you. I can’t lose you already, not like this.” Lan WangJi moved his face down to press his lips against Wei Wuxian’s skin. “I need to know you’ll be safe—Eyeahck!”

He had sunk his teeth into Wei Wuxian’s back, his arms tightening around Wei Wuxian’s body to hold him in place. “Lan Zhan! Stop! That hurts! Lan Zhan! Lan Zhan! Stop it! Stop biting me! Stop it!” Wei Wuxian slapped at Lan WangJi’s arm until he let up enough for Wei Wuxian to spin around. Facing him, Wei Wuxian shouted, “What the fuck was that about?” Lan WangJi looked at him, with eyes that were either innocent or bored. He could be hard to read sometimes.

Wei Wuxian said—“You can’t just bite people, Lan Zhan.”—but already his anger was waning. He couldn’t keep the smile from sliding on his face. “I get it.” He slid a hand against Lan WangJi’s bicep. “No more pity party. So, what do you propose we do instead?” Lan WangJi blinked languidly at him and then cast his eyes to the door behind him. Wei Wuxian had left it open in his rush to get back to Lan WangJi. Now, someone was standing in it.

“You turned around?” Wei Wuxian asked.

Jiang Cheng nodded once and quickly. He looked past Wei Wuxian to Lan WangJi in the bathtub, and his brow furrowed so deeply that he looked like he might hurt himself with the strain. “Can we talk in private?”

——

“I know what you’re going to say,” Wei Wuxian said. They were standing in the hallway outside the bathroom, and, while Jiang Cheng was a little concerned that the thing his brother was apparently harboring in the bathtub would still be able to hear them, he figured it was a lost cause at this point anyway. 

“No, you don’t.” It would be pretty impressive if he did given that Jiang Cheng hadn’t quite decided what he was going to say yet. 

“Yes, I do. You’re going to say we should turn him in or blame this whole thing on Wen Ning and Wen Qing so we can salvage whatever’s left of our reputations and move on with our lives, but I can’t do that, Jiang Cheng. I can’t just walk away from all this, from him.”

Jiang Cheng decided what he was going to say. “I want to help you.” 

“You… want to…”

It hadn’t been a syntactical question, but Jiang Cheng took the opportunity to correct himself anyway. “I am going to help you, whether either of us want me to.”

“Why?” Wei Wuxian asked, with a look of genuine wonder. It hurt something in Jiang Cheng’s chest to think his brother thought so little of him.

Jiang Cheng straightened up. “Because you are my brother.”

Wei Wuxian’s face did something then. He got distant for a moment—that weird unreadable distant, like when they were children and their mother would berate him for screwing something up, or like just after they had taken that stupid evaluation test and he said he was certain he had failed it. In moments like these, Jiang Cheng could never guess what he was thinking. It made him uncomfortable. “So, what’s your plan here Wei Wuxian?”

That shook him out of his reverie. Jiang Cheng watched his brother’s face come to life and his body language open up to let Jiang Cheng in. He had been hugging his arms to his chest again, but now he dropped them and began to explain in earnest. “If I can just get him to the canal,” he said. “I have to wait until it rains, but I should be able to get him to the ocean.”

Jiang Cheng's eyes went wide. "Your scars are gone!"

"Huh? Oh, yeah. It's not a big deal." Wei Wuxian was blushing.

"It definitely is. Are you alright? Uhh," Jiang Cheng wasn't always great at handling gender things. He had always been supportive, of course, especially when their mother had been really bad about the whole situation, but he was a little out of his depth here, to be honest.

"I'm fine. Well, I guess. I don't know whether I'm ecstatic or whether I miss them. It's kind of surreal honestly, but, you know, I'm fine. He healed me."

“He?”

“Lan Zhan.”

“You named him.” Of course, Wei Wuxian had named him. Why was he surprised? 

“Well, he told me.”

“He told you?” Jiang Cheng knew his tone had gone a bit mean even before he saw Wei Wuxian’s eyes soften at the edges, but this whole situation was ridiculous. “He can’t speak, Wei Wuxian.”

Wei Wuxian shrugged and twisted his mouth to the side a little. “We have a bond.”

Fuck. Well, Jiang Cheng sure as hell wasn’t going to unpack that. He felt his eyes narrowing without really meaning them to. “Well, _I’m_ going to keep calling him Lan WangJi.”

“That’s probably for the best. He doesn’t really like you anyways.”

“The feeling’s mutual.” Jiang Cheng must have made a face then because Wei Wuxian laughed at him. For a moment he looked so young, like he did when the three of them were all just children. The three of them… “Do you think we should tell A-Jie about all this?” Jiang Cheng asked.

Wei Wuxian stopped laughing. “Uh. No,” he said. “I think this would…” Wei Wuxian took a shaky breath and cast his eyes down to stare intensely at the baseboard in their hallway. “She doesn’t deserve to get dragged into this.” And there was that look again. Distant.

“She’d want to know,” Jiang Cheng offered. It was true. Jiang Yanli was a lot like Wei Wuxian. The two of them were idealists, and they had a habit of egging each other on. Yanli, especially, had trouble leaving well enough alone when matters of the heart were concerned. But, with her diplomat position in mind, it was probably for the best that she never find out just what was happening in Wei Wuxian’s heart right now. Frankly, Jiang Cheng was having trouble acknowledging to himself that his brother seemed to feel a whole lot more for the lab experiment in their bathroom than just his regular bleeding heart compassion.

“Yeah, well…” Wei Wuxian trailed off, likely lost in the same thoughts Jiang Cheng had just been having. They couldn’t tell their sister. Somebody in this family needed to survive when all of this went to shit.

“Yeah,” Jiang Cheng said. He paused, then something possessed him to say, “Dad always liked you better, you know?”

“What?” Wei Wuxian did know. Of course, he knew. But, among the many things he and Jiang Cheng _did not_ _talk about_ , this was perhaps number one. And yet, this time, Jiang Cheng didn't let it go.

“Mom liked me better, but Dad always liked you.”

“Well, I guess he chose wrong.”

“No,” Jiang Cheng said, “he didn’t.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, neither saying anything, maybe just trying to see who would blink first. Then, Jiang Cheng said, “Talk me through the plan again. In detail this time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *ahem* So, this is the part where I point meaningfully at the major character death warning on this fic. Okay, bye.


End file.
